By Jesse D. Palmer
We’re in a simultaneously dark and exhilarating time. Many people are feeling paralyzed and overwhelmed by economic stress, authoritarianism, the collapsing ecosystem and war.
And yet the system is toppling itself — bringing danger but also a path to a better future. How many people other than the oligarchs, the dictators and their henchmen feel like things are going well or support the economic and political establishment at this point? The bosses have over promised and under delivered — and billions of people are seething. Capitalism faces a looming debt crisis and stock market bubble of its own making, ruinously high fuel prices because of the war in Iran, increasingly destructive weather, and populations unable to start families, get decent jobs or afford health care and basic necessities. All the system seemingly has to offer is AI that will either usurp control over our lives, or go off the rails and kill us by mistake.
Extreme contradictions like this are highly unstable. You can feel it in the air — something has to give. Around the world revolts and riots are breaking out and old illusions and inertia are slipping away.
The only tool the system has left to save itself is distraction, disempowerment, isolation, and maintaining a sense that there are no alternatives — that current conditions are inevitable. Also police thugs and attacks on immigrants. None of it brings fulfillment, contentment, meaning or more than a fragile and superficial resignation to the status quo.
I want to do something to fight, but most of the time I can’t figure out what will work. It is tempting to just focus on my personal life because my little corner of life is still pleasant. But keeping our heads down under these circumstance is dangerous and just makes me feel worse in the long-run.
I think it helps to articulate the world we want clearly, boldly, publicly, and often. Corporations, computers and hierarchical structures only offer more of the same. It is up to us to dream worlds worth living in — full of emotion, cooperation, pleasure, abundance, beauty, community engagement, local color and meaning. You can’t make social change if you’re only focused on how bad everything is all the time.
We need to get beyond our bubbles and avoid setting our expectations too low. Community gardens and free boxes are great, but we can think bigger and demand more fundamental transformations. Let’s eat the whole pie, not just nibble around the edges.
When established structures collapse, it can suddenly open up opportunities for alternatives based on life-affirming values and principles. Luckily, decentralized networks and counter-institutions have been developing and refining non-coercive, horizontal, cooperative forms of organization and DIY skills for decades. These sleeper cells are ready for our moment.
We also need to be clear about what is unacceptable: wars in Gaza, Iran, Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and elsewhere. Masked thugs on the streets snatching our neighbors and surveillance cameras on every corner. We can’t tolerate a system which concentrates wealth for a few billionaires while most people are struggling — built on ecological destruction, fossil fuel dependence, deforestation, toxic pollution, and plastics choking the oceans and our bodies.
The passion behind the widespread rejection of data centers isn’t just about electricity prices or noise. AI is the logical conclusion of capitalism. The bosses have always sought to increase efficiency by replacing human labor with machines. Unlike previous tools that expanded human abilities, AI seeks to replace us entirely — our ability to make decisions and create. Constant interactions with machines brings only loneliness, isolation and meaninglessness. AI can’t benefit regular people — concentrates ever more wealth and power in ever fewer unaccountable hands.
To wake up from this nightmare, we need to focus away from danger, loss, grief and fear of police repression — and instead concentrate on our desires, the brighter future we’re fighting to build and the unbelievable weakness, fragility and isolation of the billionaires, their government puppets and those with fear and hate in their hearts who seek to serve them.
Making trouble in the streets isn’t the only answer — you can’t riot alone and sloppy actions can empower repressive forces — but a little disruption sure feels better than doing nothing. Action can help break the veneer of apathy and acceptance.
Since no one knows what will get us out of this quagmire, it’s time to throw spaghetti against the walls and see what sticks. Being in community is especially vital right now. Acting against this rotting edifice feels impossible on my own. But when I’m with my housemates, at a Slingshot meeting, or on a midnight parade in San Francisco with paper lanterns, costumes and a marching band, survival and creating a new world worth living in seems within reach and even inevitable.
Liberation isn’t only something we’ll achieve later. We should practice, nurture and achieve freedom now as often as we can and in as many aspects of our lives as possible. Not just on a political and economic level but culturally — in our families, workplaces, schools and on our blocks.
Creating a new world isn’t a duty or responsibility we have to others. It’s a constructive and important game we play for ourselves and with those around us that makes life exciting and that helps us to figure who we really are.